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Is there any way you can save the videos on You Tube onto your computer? There's this Monty Python sketch I really want that I keep watching again and again.

If this is illegal forget I said anything.

If you dig into the HTML code and find the link to the video file then you can probably save it like that.

It's not in the html file as they use flash to link to the videos, if you view it in IE however sometimes IE copies it into your cache so might be worth a look there

I use this. It's great! Then I use a program called iSquint to make it iPod-compatible. But that's Mac only.

There's a way: http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

Though I think it takes Firefox.

Ew downloader programs! Okay they might be 50% faster but if you're less trusting like me and are recluctant to bog down your system with plugins or whatever else, just look in the page source for it.

go to video page.

open source.

search in the source code for .swf?video_id or a truncated version thereof- you should find something like ctrl-c the video id, it's what you need go back to the video page window and type http://youtube.com/get_video? into address bar then paste the video id on the end so it looks like so Wait until the video is done loading before you press enter so it will be cached on your computer first.

Press enter, get movie. The file is in .flv format.

Afaik, this works on every browser if you are using default cache settings.

It's even easier on Google Video: just click the download button (and you get it in .avi format, which is better ).

RKN: You need Google Video Player to get an AVI file from the GVP download (but they call it GVI). :X

There are AT LEAST half a dozen Firefox extensions for downloading media files automatically:

https://addons.mozilla.org/search.php?app=firefox&q=YouTube&...

RKN: You need Google Video Player to get an AVI file from the GVP download (but they call it GVI).

Actually, no I don't. It works fine in my web browser. It has a .avi extension and works fine in both Totem and Xine-ui.


That button always seems to work here (on Linux).

Thanks for the help everyone, I think I'll take a look at MAZZter's link, all the technical things confuse me.

Not that it matters but every program I've tried saves the files with an extension I can't open. I have no idea how to convert them.

Whats the extension? You should have an option of looking on the web for a program to run it.

If the file extension is missing or wrong you can sometimes figure out file formats by dropping the file into notepad (just don't save it) and checking the first few bytes. Most file formats have a header, and many start with a telltale few byes. ZIP files have "PK"... EXE, DLL, SCR, OCX, CPL, and other executable files have "MZ". WAV files have "RIFF". Etc.

AVIs can also start with RIFF, and you can see AVI, LIST, as well as the name of the codec used in the first line or so.

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Strings.html

This program is good for filtering these strings, since Notepad doesn't do so well if you drop a large file in it.

Or you can just rename it to a .AVI name and see if that works.

[Edit: If it's an FLV (FLash Video) file, I think I had one of those once and eventually decided it wasn't worth the hassle. You can probably find conversion programs for it though.]

I think it was .flv but I can't say for sure.

And MAZZ, when talking to me, remember, I speak English.